In a Word: The Sound of an Audit

Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.

The Latin verb meaning “to hear” is audire, and already you’re probably thinking of some of its Modern English descendants: Our bodies’ auditory system lets us hear, an auditorium is where people go to hear lectures and concerts, and an audition, which in English first meant just “the power to hear,” became in the mid- to late-19th century a particular type of “hearing” for performers hoping to win a part.

There is another audire descendant that is on many a mind as Tax Day draws near, but whose relationship to hearing isn’t as obvious: audit. Today’s audits require a lot of paper and math but little to listen to, but that is only the near end of the history of this word.

In Latin, the -tor suffix creates a word that names a type of person associated with a noun or verb. For example, one who wields a sword (a gladius in Latin) is a gladiator. One who leads or brings people together (conducere) is a conductor. And in this case, someone who hears is an auditor.

That word had a fairly broad sense in classical times. An auditor was someone who performed intentional listening for practically any specific purpose, like hearing complaints, enjoying a musical performance, or listening to the calls of songbirds. One common and widespread form of listening was of a student to a teacher, so auditor also came to indicate a disciple or a learner. (And to this day, to attend a class in order to learn but without the expectation of receiving a formal credit is to audit that class.)

Another type of auditor worked in an official capacity to hear the complaints and explanations of petitioners, as in Parliament or in court. It’s from this source that auditor came to be someone who examined records and heard evidence in order to settle accounts or arrive at an official decision. In most legal situations, words like judge, justice, and arbitrator took over this role, but in matters financial, decisions remained with an auditor.

Language being what it is, both the noun and the verb form audit came late as a backformation from auditor to, well, describe what an auditor does. The same course was taken by the word edit; just as there were auditors years before anything was audited, there were editors long before anyone described our work as editing.